One Alternative Model

During December, I teamed up with authors Autumn Birt and P.H. Solomon to run Facebook ads in order to gain subscribers.

The way we did this was by giving away one book each, and sharing the subscribers among ourselves.

Autumn set everything up, and she did a wonderful job. We spent $1 daily each, and ended up with 85 new subscribers at a cost of $30. This means that each subscriber cost us just $0.35.

The only drawback with this model is that there is no tripwire page. Which means there’s not even the possibility of you recouping the money spent on the ads.

Incidentally, we are now planning the next ads, so if you’re interested in joining us, just let me know. The more of us, the lower the cost per subscriber – and the more enticing the offer!

A Second Alternative Model

I ran a final experiment in December, this time in support of my Runaway Smile giveaway. I’ve been wondering whether it made sense to advertise a giveaway in Facebook instead of the more traditional websites.

So, I thought I’d create an ad and use the promotion to gain some new subscribers. I created a dedicated page on my nicholasrossis.com blog, and set up an ad.

I gave it a total budget comparable to what most promoters charge: $30.

This worked beautifully! I created two ads: one was a Boost Post kind of ad, and it had a CPC of $0.09 (!). The other was a traditional ad, which had a CPC of $0.28.

The Boost Post ad had a reach of 1,172 people, for an amazingly low budget of $5. It led to 53 clicks, all of which I assume led to downloads.

The ad had a reach of 1,446 people, for a budget of $24. This led to 84 clicks. Again, I assume that all of these led to downloads.

So, how many subscribers did I gain?

None.

Stupidly enough, I had left a direct link to Smile’s Amazon page, where people could download the book for free during the giveaway. This made subscription completely optional, and its telltale that no one bothered to subscribe, despite the fact that almost 140 people saw that page and (probably) downloaded the book.

Still, if you consider that I had some 400 downloads while that ad ran, and I only announced it here and on Books Butterfly, I’d say it was a win. One with a major lesson learned, of course – next time, don’t send people to Amazon without making them subscribe first 🙂

Going through all your activities I just wonder: how do you manage to do so many things at the same time? Does your day have 48 hours? You give to us readers such amazing and fantastic hints and tips! :-)c

Hey Nicolas, thanks for the post! When you run traffic directly to amazon, to generate sales, how do you track how each ad set on your campaign performed? Amazon associates?
Do you recommend this method? it should have much less “drop off rates” than subscription page-open email-click thru-purchase.
Thanks!

I know a lot of marketers recommend you send people to a squeeze page, but I always send people straight to Amazon. I want to remove any and all roadblocks from their way. If there was a way for them to buy straight from the ad, believe me, I’d use that.

I use AMS’s own reporting to track my AMS campaigns. The numbers themselves almost seem arbitrary at times, but the give the gist of things. If a campaign has a 10% ACOS (Average Cost Of Sale) and another has a 400% one, it’s easy to guess which one is underperforming 🙂

As for the rest of advertising media, I only use Facebook nowadays. Facebook reports how many clicks you have, so I have a ballpark-figure kind of performance.

Finally, you can always use different links to measure various campaigns. They do tell you how many people have clicked on each of them, but it’s impossible to know what happened next, i.e. how many of them proceeded to buy the book.

As always, Nick, I’m appalled at the very thought of having to run such detailed and hard-fought campaigns to sell a book, whilst simultaneously placated at the calming influence of the numbers. To say I’m confused is an understatement.

Great ideas, Nicholas. Thanks for sharing them. I’m having a hard time making time for Facebook, but I know some people who work it incredibly well and swear not only that it sells book, but is less time consuming than blogging. I’d never thought of it as a place to run a giveaway ad, but it seems like it works 🙂